Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Actually, parents know best

I'm so glad these kids are playing. I'm delighted they are not sitting at desks, being criticised for the way they hold a crayon at the age of two.

I want every nursery and pre-school, and all early years schools around the country, to make mud pies. Schools need to be bolder, more imaginative. They should do what many parents want: say that testing toddlers is shit, so they're not going to do it. While you go to work, they're off to play in the woods instead.

I'm sure many parents instinctively feel that an assessment approach to early years - instead of free-range creative imaginative play - is education in the wrong direction.

Sitting kids behind desks makes them easier to control, sure. But it's not the right way for a healthy individual to grow. And it only works in the short-term.

I want more kids to be free. Every move they make should not come with a teacher-assessor, an Ofsted inspector, and a tick box on a clipboard. That is a crap way to teach children about the role of adults in their lives. It is a destructive way to say 'this is the society you grow up in'. It destroys trust. It breaks apart every growing relationship. It says, 'your parents do not know you best. The assessor does'. It is social control, disguised as education.

How many kids were removed deliberatelyfrom this culture under the Labour years?

But here's my problem with this article. Not the nursery. Not what they are doing. That's fantastic. National coverage will be great for them, and put smiles on faces.

It's the writing. Specifically, the assumptions that creep through this article, and that I feel the writer holds about the audience. Assumptions that are implicitly endorsed by The Independent. The article merits a page, after all.

This question: 'So what if the children do splash each other with the water?'

Eh? I don't know whether to fall about laughing, or drop my head in my hands in despair.

Whose voice is that? Is it the headteacher presenting herself with a rhetorical question? Is it your voice, Richard?

And then, more, who is the question aimed at? Richard, who are you speaking to, love? Are you asking this question of intelligent readers, and people who are parents of kids?

To even think this is a worthwhile question, to ask it of us, assumes we have already absorbed, endorsed, and approved the toddler assessment culture; that we now look up in horror at this latest assault on our educational provision. Look Mabel! I have dropped my toast in shock! Have you seen the breakfast news?! Kids splash each other with water! The end of the world has come!

But Richard, maybe you're asking this question of yourself? It certainly reads like it.

Well, don't worry about that. Grit knows a thing or two about talking to herself. But she keeps a blog read by six people and a hamster. Richard, you write in a national newspaper theoretically read by thousands. Do you know your audience?

I have not, in my life either as a parent or in pre-parenthood, ever met anyone who thinks it is somehow dangerous, abnormal, regressive, alarming, a retrograde step for civilization, if nursery kids splash water at each other.

The only way I can imagine this behaviour can be thought of as alarming, is within the context of a dry classroom, possibly one in which Ofsted is reviewing behaviour. And that, Richard, is an assumption behind this question. That pre-school life is automatically institutional; the mainstream supervision is school; that child behaviour within this context necessarily must be monitored, explained, and justified.

Maybe it speaks volumes about the outlook of The Independent. Maybe the life of an educational writer is a narrow one. Maybe journalists should get out more, so they can ask sensible questions.

An article like this offers the opposite to the assumptions I have, out here, in my home ed world. That children of all ages are free to interact together, to play, take a role in supervising each other, grow with the expectation that adults are here to support them, help them realise their liberty. There should be no justification to play.

Richard, I think your question comes from a wider assumption, so often made across the educational media, about what kids should be doing and the contexts they should be found in.

It betrays that same, predictable track of many education writers: that education can only take place in school, that the words school and education are interchangeable. As if one means the other. Yet how clearly you can see, from people about you, from kids themselves, from looking at how they behave, listening to what they say, that schools and education are often worlds apart.

He probably needs a thorough soaking at the water play table - silly sod!

PS, that's a good idea from Kestrel, any chance you could fix up an applause button Grit? And maybe a 'throw random bouquets/chocolates/cake button' . . . I was going to say bottles of beer but that might be dangerous ;-)

What struck me is how much focus he put on the RISK that the kiddies are taking. I was imagining 4 year olds building Teetering Towers of Danger with rusty metal and power tools. Not playing in the MUD. Or is merely having access to the outdoors High Risk Behaviour nowadays?

Everyone knows you can't LEARN and HAVE FUN simultaneously. Something should be done. Call your LA immed. before someone is bitten by a hostile caterpillar.

A friend of mine works at a local school (remaining nameless because I'm pretty sure your blog is read by more then 6 people and hamster!)

She told me yesterday that they'd had the Ofsted people in, and that it had gone well because they had shut them in a room with good biscuits and managed to cover up the teenagers camping in the field, the ambulance that arrived and the obscene cartoon a pupil had drawn on a wall!

proof, roger? you may be right in that the mindset doesn't go. on the ground here, the local authorities still look dodgy: home ed moving closer to safeguarding because the authorities are broke and doubling up work. so one person does a twice-heavy job eight times as badly. i predict disaster. however, if badman&balls had got their way? the legal bills would have been expensive.

Other stuff

We have educated triplet girls to age 16 by never sending them to school.

At age 16, one daughter is now at 6th form for A levels, so you can find out about culture clash.

The other two daughters are taking a year to think what they want to do next, because we run at our own pace.If you are looking for primary, try the archives under 2011 or 2012. Ideas? Try Seven days with elephants.

Secondary home ed? Try 2012 or 2014 through to 2016.

Exams made life boring for us all and the blog stopped for long periods so the home educated could concentrate on enjoying some teens.

From 2016, expect the blog to start concentrating on me, me, me, because it's my turn.

Home ed style: Secular, philosophical, eclectic, autonomous.

Exams: own choice IGCSE courses. The HE-exams group is a must-join. I gave formal lessons in nothing.

where is everybody?

This blog is a record of a home educationwrit for parents thinking about home edwrit for the LA who need an education about home edwrit for Grit's friends and relations who drop in once a yearand writ for Grit's sane and lovely mind.

The internal DCSF Consultation Report, made public 23 January. (pdf)In Annex A, 94% of respondents disagreed that the local authority should have the power to interview a home educated child alone.When this comes out Ed Balls' mouth in the Second Reading Debate, 94% against turns to:'The vast majority of parents would be happy to let that happen'(Hansard 11.01.10, Children, Schools and Families Bill, col 437.)

Love it or loathe it? The petition still broke a record.Press release in the Mirror, Channel4 news, the Guardian.

'Even if you don't currently see yourself home educating, you never know what the future might hold, and if a time comes when you find yourself needing to pull your child out of school, I hope the option is still available to you, and you don't regret thinking *it's nothing to do with me*.'

Read the Right to Reply'Home educators are renowned for their strong opinions and independent spirit. They come from all faiths and none. They have as many approaches to education as there are children. They rarely agree on anything. And yet they are remarkably united in their opposition to these proposals. There is great concern that their way of life will be legislated out of existence.'--Response to the Badman Review of Elective Home Education in England and reaction to the Select Committee hearing.

The problem with home educators is that they are impossible to define. The only things that links them is respect for their children. And did the state just stagger foolishly across that line?Are we sandal wearing tree huggers who let our kids run wild or control mad Jesus freaks who don't want them learning about sex and evolution? Are we hot housing or leaving them to watch TV and play computer games all day? -Firebird.The UK government suggested that we home educate our children to cover up our abuse.On that issue, would you like some statistics?

'The Department [for Children, Schools and Families] is aware that attempts are being made on the Internet to vilify and harass the author of the review. It is the Department's view that, whilst dealing with each request on its merits, this situation will have to be taken into account in dealing with any relevant FOI requests. ... we anticipate the need to consider whether it is in the public interest to release information likely to intensify any such campaign, or to lead to harassment or distress to individuals.'Hello DCSF. Vilify: to make vicious and defamatory statements about.Like putting it about that home educated children are abused by their parents? Isolated? Unsocialised? Denied an education?And the latest one, that their mothers have Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy, and benefit from their child's suffering.

... compulsory registration, entry to the home, inspection according to external standards, and power to see the child without the parent present.By implication this applies to anyone who has their child at home with them: particularly parents with under 5s, but also those with school-aged children who are at home in the evenings, over the weekends, and throughout the summer holidays. Think on: the possibility of parental inspection, with or without your presence, based on the very human whim of a local authority officer.Is that okay with you?Renegade Parent on the implications for all parents from the Badman review of home education.

'Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children'.(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 26.3)

Photos and text copyright Grit.This is Grit's blog. The pictures come from her broken phone camera, and they are hers by right.

The words too are Grit's, Grit's, all Grit's. This is not to say you cannot use any words that Grit uses - after all, she is the unhinged woman who once banned SOIL - but you just cannot lift them in the long, complex and lovely arrangements, like the ones Grit has writ.

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